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According to Bede (died in 735 CE), writing in De Tempore Rationum ("On the Reckoning of Time"), Ch. xv, "The English months", the word is derived from Eostre, a festival. Bede connects it with an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, to whom the month answering to our April, and called Eostur-monath, was dedicated. The connection is often assumed, without quoting Bede himself, who says,

'In olden times the English people— for it did not seem fitting to me that I should speak of other nations' observance of the year and yet be silent about my own nation's— calculated their months according to the course of the Moon. Hence, after the manner of the Greeks and the Romans, [the months] take their name from the Moon, for the moon is called mona and each month monath.

"The first month, which the Latins call January, is Giuli; February is called Solmonath; March Hrethmonath; April, Eosturmonath[...etc.]

"Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.'

What is secure is that the lunar month around the month of April in the Julian calendar was called the Eostre-monath, named after the goddess. And as Christian tradition of Easter, which has also fallen in April, arrived in some Germanic-speaking regions, the people named the then-unnamed Christian day after the goddess, that is, in English as Easter, and in GermanGerman (called Deutsch in German in which germanisch refers to prechristian times), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and one of the world's major languages. It is the language with the most native speakers in the European Union. as Ostern. Remnents of her characteristics can also be found in the Easter BunnyThe Easter Bunny is a symbolic rabbit or hare, usually in depictions, used in the celebrations of Easter especially in Western European cultures. Alledged pre-Christian origin The word "Easter" is sometimes said to have originated from the name of a pre- celebrations.

Her name originated in Old Teutonic, derived from the same root that gave the conjectural *austrôn-, meaning "dawn". Later on, her name was spelled variously as:

• Eástre in Anglo-Saxon language
• Éastre in Northumbrian language
• Other spellings, said to be from 'uncertain sources': Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Estre, Eostre, Eoster, Eostra, Eastre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron, and Ausos, do not appear in the Icelandic Eddas nor in German texts. There is no parallel to Eostre in Old NorseOld Norse or Danish tongue is the Germanic language once spoken by the inhabitants of the Nordic countries (for instance during the Viking Age). Formally, it can be divided into two similar dialects: ;West Norse: Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian ;East Nors.

A Revised etymology of Oestrus might be in order, since so much speculation has been erected on Bede's single remark.

The Latin meaning of oestrus comes directly from Greek oistros, originally referring to a 'gadfly'— specifically the gadfly that Hera sent to torment IoThis article is about the mytholgical figure. For the moon of Jupiter, see Io (moon). In Greek mythology, Io (pronounced "EE oh" though "EYE oh," is acceptable) was the daughter of Inachus, a river god (it should be noted that the early genealogy of the H, who had been wooed and won in her heifer form by Zeus. Homer uses the word to describe the panic of the suitors in Odyssey book 22. The modern technical Latin meaning of estrusEstrus (also spelled strus or heat in female mammals is the period of greatest female sexual responsiveness usually coinciding with ovulation. Most female mammals will only seek sex and are considered most fertile during their heat, also known as the mati became more prominent after it was revived in 1890 to describe the female equivalent of 'rut'.

Oestrus/oistros also meant 'frenzy.' Euripides uses it both to describe the madness of Orestes, and of Heracles. In x (line 1144), Heracles has murdered his own children and cries, 'Where did the madness seize me? where did it destroy me?'

More to the point, Herodotus (Histories ch.93.1) uses oistros to describe the desire of fish to spawn.

Oestrus is an irrational drive: Plato, Laws, 854b:

“My good man, the evil force that now moves you and prompts you to go temple-robbing is neither of human origin nor of divine, but it is some impulse bred of old in men from ancient wrongs unexpiated, which courses round wreaking ruin; and it you must guard against with all your strength."

In the Republic, Plato again uses the word, to describe the soul "driven and drawn by the gadfly of desire"

The earliest English language sense is of "frenzied passion."

It seems reasonably certain that 'Eostre' refers to the annual Romano-Briton spring celebrations during 'Eostermonat' as Bede reported. But Bede, writing in the late 8th century, may have conflated the festival with the goddess's name. The goddess's original name appears to have been lost, for the name of her springtime 'rising of the sap' festival was translated into Latin, before the Roman legions left in the 5th century, it would be reasonable to suppose.

A distracting apparent early reference to 'Easter' in the Authorized Version translation of the New Testament, Acts 12:4, is simply an anachronistic mistranslation of the Greek pascha ("Passover"), in which King James's committee followed such earlier translators as Tyndale and Coverdale. The Acts passage refers to the seven-day Passover festival (including the Feast of Unleavened Bread); "it is reasonably certain that the New Testament contains no reference to a yearly celebration of the resurrection of Christ."